Bernadette Longo: Facebook: not just for students

Bernadette Longo, was recently interviewed for a story in the Daily about how University faculty are using Facebook, a social networking site.

Faculty frequently use Facebook for networking, but not many have brought the site into the classroom. Associate Professor Bernadette Longo, who teaches in the Department of Writing Studies, is an exception. This semester, she integrated a Facebook group into her Information Design class and asked her students to join.
The group, called “First Step Initiative,” is centered around an organization by the same name, which works with women entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group has 109 members globally. Longo’s students are able to share information with people around the world via Facebook, but the site’s other opportunities are still unknown, Longo said. Since Facebook is still relatively young, teachers are still figuring out how it can be used to educate students, Longo said. “Who doesn’t love Facebook?” she said. “We don’t exactly know yet the full potential. It seems like it has a good structure for working with people in the whole world.”